I get up from the booth and throw my napkin onto the table. I don’t even know where I’m going. It doesn’t matter. Just not here. But when I start for the door, Lewis’s hand grips my wrist, holding me back.
“Hey, hold on,” he says, his voice softening. I reluctantly face him. “I didn’t mean—” He shakes his head. “It was a joke. I’m sorry,” he continues, sounding surprisingly genuine.
I wait by the booth, unmoving, reluctant to stay. But I have no choice, really. Unless I want to spring for a four-hundred-dollar Uber to New Hampshire, I have nowhere to go except Lewis’s car.
I sit back down, scowling. Lewis says nothing. “Just because I haven’t dated a dozen girls doesn’t mean I’m a loser,” I say eventually. I’ve known for years what my brother thinks of me, and I’ve chosen to ignore it or, at the very least, hide my resentment of it, convincing myself he couldn’t possibly view me that way. It’s liberating and dangerous to finally put words to the feeling instead.
Lewis’s face falls. His bravado disappears, and for once I’m seeing my brother as himself, not the debonair role he plays for his friends and job interviewers and probably even his girlfriends. He’s serious, even somber. “I don’t think you’re a loser,” he says.
The lack of prevarication in his reply startles me. It’s not like Lewis to speak so straightforwardly instead of playing it cool and letting me read whatever I want into his detached dismissiveness.
I don’t believe him. He probably only wants the easy way out of this conversation. He doesn’t know how to deal with me talking back, and he doesn’t like it.
“I don’t,” he insists. “I think you take everything really seriously.”
It’s the understatement of the century. “Some things are serious,” I say, knowing it’s futile to try to convince Lewis to care, and feeling irrationally compelled to regardless. “Like Mom.”
Lewis looks away, his eyes flitting to the parking lot outside, gravelly pavement under the slate-gray sky. “Some things are,” he says. “Not everything. I just want to make sure you’re cutting yourself some slack.”
I notice how once again he’s dodged discussing Mom and once again completely misunderstood what it’s like inside my head. Cut myself some slack? I wrestle for the right words to explain this fundamental fact to him. “I’m not like you, okay?” I say quietly, staring at my plate. It’s hard to admit—hard to confirm what Lewis has said and felt and implied about me for years. We are different. He’s effortlessly cool, and I am a loser.
Lewis snorts. I look up, surprised to find him close to laughing.
“Well, duh,” he says. He picks up his burger and takes a huge final bite. I watch him uncomprehendingly while he chews. “I know we’re different,” he continues. “Sometimes I can’t believe we were raised under the same roof.”
I start to smile, unable to stop myself. His constant carelessness does hurt—I haven’t forgotten the feeling—but right now, the humor of the moment eases the sting. “Well, we were adopted,” I reply.
Lewis waves his hand. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
He glances at the bill and puts cash down on the receipt. We slide out of the booth, and I feel a sudden warmth in my chest from his words, a gratefulness for this unique instance of my brother’s universal easygoing acceptance. It’s me he’s accepting this time, and it’s foreign and friendly and kind of fun.
We walk toward the door of the diner. In the corner of the restaurant I notice a family of four red-haired children and their parents, who look beleaguered.
Lewis pauses in front of the door, and I nearly ram into him. “I didn’t hook up with that girl last night,” he says. I don’t know why he’s telling me, or why now. I stay quiet. It’s a stiff, strange moment. “I just got her number,” he continues.
“Okay.” I nod.
“I wanted you to know.” He runs a hand through his hair, looking troubled. “I was only trying to have some fun,” he says with resignation, and I detect unusual weight in his words. “I’m still with Prisha. We’ll stay together until the day we’ve decided to break up.”
“And then?” I ask, wondering how I can reconcile his purported commitment with his hands on the other girl’s jeans, their faces close to touching.
Lewis shrugs and opens the door, letting in the cold. “Then I guess I’ll use the number.”
Fitz
WHILE WE DRIVE to Wesleyan, Lewis tells me about the trip to Florida he and his fraternity brothers have planned for spring. After reaching the campus, we walk toward the admissions building, where I have a tour booked today. I have to admit, the admissions office is charming, a custard-yellow bungalow with gray roofs and white-edged windows. Lewis walks me in and says he’ll find me here when the tour’s over. I nod. We’re not exactly friends now, but it’s coming a little easier, the uncomfortable disconnect replaced by an unfamiliar détente.
When the tour begins, it’s not long before I find myself distracted. The possibility of seeing Juniper might be keeping me on the road this week, but it’s doing nothing to increase my enthusiasm for any of these colleges. I pull out my phone while the tour group passes the impressive white-columned façade of what the guide explains is the library. I’m hoping for a text from Juniper, who didn’t reply to my previous message.
I click on the screen. Nothing.
It feels weird, knowing we’re both in Connecticut, an hour apart, and yet ignoring each other. I consider whether to text her again. Pro: the possibility she’ll reply. It’s unlikely, though, since she didn’t reply when I texted that I didn’t think she’d be the type to follow a guy to college. Con: she’ll think I’m an obsessive creep, delete my number, and forget I ever existed. I’ll end up celibate, living with fourteen cats and my extensive collection of detailed model trains, rueing this exact moment when my life went wrong.
I put my phone back into my pocket.
Eventually, we return to the admissions building where the tour began. Lewis is waiting out front, carrying two Starbucks cups, steam seeping from the lids. He holds one out when I reach him.
“I don’t know your drink,” he says. “I went with cappuccino.”
“Cappuccino’s great,” I say instead of explaining I’m nowhere near enough of a habitual coffee drinker to have “a drink.”
“How was it?” Lewis asks. It’s the middle of the afternoon, and the sun is peeking through one sliver in the frigid sheet of clouds. We cross the street, returning to the parking lot. Lewis’s car is in the back row, overlooking a giant field in the middle of the campus. The snow hasn’t stuck here, and the grass isn’t completely brown yet. I briefly wonder what the field looks like in summer. Verdant. Green with plants or grass.